Businesses and consumers make complex trade-off decisions every day when buying and selling supplies and services.
Sometimes it makes sense to pay more or charge more for a supply or service when quality improvements, added features, or other considerations justify the price. Other times, paying more or adding features provides no meaningful benefit so we opt for the least expensive item that satisfies our needs.
The federal government uses this same framework, dubbed the “best value continuum,” in negotiated acquisitions. On one end of this continuum is a full trade-off, where non-price factors, e.g., quality and past performance, take precedence over price. On the opposite end of the continuum is the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) process. Under LPTA, the government determines its minimum acceptable technical requirements and then seeks to award a contract to the lowest priced offeror who meets the minimum requirements.
Federal agencies have been criticized for overusing the LPTA source selection process, based on the concerns that LPTA procedures chill innovation and hamstring agencies who could benefit from trading cost or price considerations for technically superior capabilities. The business community also criticized government reliance on LPTA to purchase safety-related items; such items should not be purchased based on minimum standards.
In response to these criticisms, Congress included Section 880 in the Fiscal Year (FY) 19 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), stating: “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States Government to avoid using lowest price technically acceptable source selection criteria in circumstances that would deny the government the benefits of cost and technical tradeoffs in the source selection process.”
Keep reading this article at: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/government-contracts-procurement-ppp/1034008/you-get-what-you-pay-for-new-final-rule-limits-use-of-lpta
See Jan. 14, 2021 Final Rule affecting LPTA at: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-14/pdf/2020-29087.pdf
In an LPTA procurement, the Government evaluates proposals for mere technical acceptability under the solicitation’s stated evaluation criteria. Of the technically acceptable proposals received from eligible offerors, the Government then awards the contract to the lowest-price proposal, without considering any additional value that more expensive proposals may provide. In an LPTA acquisition, it does not matter that the second least expensive proposal may have three times more technical merit than the lowest-price technically acceptable proposal. Even if that technically superior proposal is only a dime more expensive, the Government is required to make the award to the acceptable proposal that is ten cents cheaper.
The Government Accountability Office’s decision to deny four protests of GSA’s Alliant 2 contracts for IT services could end up being a landmark ruling that is that first nail.
